


recollection

by douchechill



Series: Daterra Sweet [1]
Category: Manhattan Love Story, Unubore Deka
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 10:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12604720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/douchechill/pseuds/douchechill
Summary: You never forget your first love. Unubore remembers the boy he fell in love with and the coffee he made him.





	recollection

You never forget your first love.

That’s how the saying goes, anyway. And for a while Unubore never believed in it–when Rie came, he was thrown for loop, and when woman after woman after woman came after, even then they were all he could think about. His second love, his third love, his fourth love; they stacked up one after the other, more and more, and the old saying seemed to stop holding any weight, if it did at all.

Unubore was a man of love’s rebirth, of optimism, of hope. Losing any old love only meant the opportunity for new love was just around the corner, and he really thought he made it past cliches and romance films and Taylor Swift-brand longing.

But as he brings another girl from another convenience store to a coffee shop, something whirrs and clicks in his head in the middle of drinking a cup of Daterra Sweet coffee. The complex machinery of his memory runs, ticking and tocking, and right before she confesses to stealing magazines, Unubore’s eyes go wide in recognition, remembrance, and memories that linger in his mind and mouth and nose.

_You never forget your first love._

He drops the cup and hears it shatter. His eyes fill with tears. Unubore asks for the bill, leaves money on the table, and moves on autopilot as he picks the girl up and takes her to his precinct.

* * *

It happened years and years and years ago, back when he was fresh from Fukushima and came to Tokyo in the hopes of being a cop like his dad. The buildings were tall, the streets packed with people, and Unubore spoke with an accent he’d be too embarrassed to admit to now.

Being a traffic cop was likely the worst chapter of his career. He stood in the middle of the streets, directed cars and bicycles and human beings, and sweat like a pig under the heat of the sun (if he wasn’t freezing in the cold of winter). Good things were few and far between. Even tolerable things were rare. His lunch break was too short, his shift was too long, and so many cars honked at him he wanted to cry more often than not.

That was the lowest point of his life, second only to when Rie refused to hit him with her car. But at the same time, hidden amidst all the muck and grime of being a young man in law enforcement, there lay one of Unubore’s happiest memories, too.

Close to his post was an event centre, and while Unubore often went there during his break to use the toilet, this time something was going on on the first floor. The banner read something about some Barista Grand Prix, the air smelled like coffee, and Unubore was distracted enough that his bladder stopped mattering.

So he wandered, curious and wondrous. He followed his nose, sniffed the air, and drifted from booth to booth and barista to barista. No matter how much any of them smiled at him, though, asking him if he wanted a sample of their coffee, none of them captured his attention.

None but the scent he was following, his feet taking him forward and his heart thudding so hard it felt his uniform was going to burst. The path he walked was laced with the slightest hint of sweetness–so different, Unubore felt, from the regular strength of coffee beans–and it only got sweeter and sweeter the further he went. The more he walked. The more he searched.

Until he saw it. _Smelled_ it.

Booth number 75.

There was only one person at the stand, moving deftly and gracefully as he prepared cups of coffee one by one. Unlike all the other contestants he refused to use paper cups, and Unubore watched in fascination as he filled porcelain after porcelain with drink. Only a few stragglers walked by, the booth too far away from the main walkways to get much attention, but given the boy made a new cup only whenever someone asked (and not a batch of cups for anyone to take as samplers), perhaps it was fine the traffic was miserable. After all, if a crowd was surrounding the barista before him, Unubore would have missed the brown of his eyes hidden behind that too-long fringe. And if he missed it, he wouldn’t have felt that stunning jolt of feeling deep in his chest.

He was a beautiful boy, dressed in a button down, a vest, and a bowtie. And he moved as beautifully as he looked: grinding each bean with care, heating water in a magnificent metal pot, and then using only paper filters to make the drink after. He was beautiful, was graceful, was gentle. He looked like a dream come true.

When Unubore finally got to make his order, he found himself stuttering too much to make sense. But all the boy needed to do was look at him–piercing, honest, endless–before deciding himself what drink he ought to make. Unubore said nothing, his throat tight and his face warm, and only did his best to keep his knees from buckling.

The finished cup was warm in his hands. Unubore can remember that much even now. But at the same time, it hadn’t been quite as warm as the smile on the boy’s face as he bowed and told him to enjoy his drink. To this day, Unubore thinks, no other smile he’s ever seen could compare to what he did that day. In that same way, nothing could compare to the coffee.

Because that coffee was everything. Because it was sweet yet bitter and thick yet light; because it felt the boy’d poured his life, his soul, and all his experience into it. Because not once in his entire twenty-odd years of living had he tasted anything like that, and now as he sits at his desk in Tokyo and remembers the way that coffee tasted in his mouth, he doubts he ever will again.

That cup made him cry. That boy made him cry. And Unubore set the empty porcelain down when he finished drinking, watching for the boy’s reaction behind all his tears.

“Thank you,” Unubore said. “For this. It was delicious.”

And the boy, his eyelids lowering the slightest bit, only bowed in reply.

For a week, that Grand Prix ran. And for a week, Unubore returned, finding Booth 75 and its silent, elegant master. Each cup was different, new, exciting–and on the third day, when Unubore tasted the most perfect blend of beans and milk, he said, “Master, it’s like you unlocked my mind and got everything I like into one cup.”

So until the week was over, that was the only kind of coffee the boy would ever make: Daterra Sweet, beans grown in Brazil and as sweet as the name implies.

Unubore fell then–fell hard for a person who spoke only through drinks, who only looked at him but never talked. Despite the silence, however, Unubore felt he knew everything about him: that coffee was his life and love, that he’d been through hell to get this far, that he never quite had friends, nor had he ever had the particular need for them. Coffee was the entirety of this boy; coffee made him who he was. And who he was, as much as Unubore could discern from the skill of his tastebuds, was enough for Unubore to be head over heels for him.

By the time he worked up the nerve to confess, the first floor of the event centre was empty. In his foolishness Unubore forgot of his one week deadline, and as abruptly as his first love came into his life, so too did he disappear forever.

For one week, the worst chapter of his life was his best.

Unubore can’t believe he forgot him.

* * *

The incident happened years ago. So long ago that he imagines a capable young man like the young barista must be married now. He daydreams all the same, though, of that boy’s wavy hair and his dapper suit, of his kind hands and the way they ground beans. Unubore spoke to him so much in those days–as much as his fifteen minute breaks would allow him–and told him about his life in Fukushima, his new life in Tokyo, and what dreams he had, no matter how silly.

As he sits in the precinct, surprisingly devoid of any cases to solve, he lets his mind wander, recalling the shape of the boy’s face and the length of his neck, and the way his collar was held together by a bowtie. Unubore remembers the sharpness of his cheekbones and the hook of his nose; he remembers how his lips looked like they were pouting. Most of all, he remembers the gracious expression the boy made every time he thanked him for his coffee: the joy, the pride, and the fulfillment written on an already handsome face.

Before he realises it, he’s started scribbling on the back of a police report, and the longing in his chest becomes too much for him to bear.

The boy comes into shape the more Unubore’s pencil scratches over paper. His features are sharp and fresh–as if Unubore only saw him yesterday–and the more he draws the more he wonders: how much has the boy grown? How mature must he be now? Shyly, quietly, Unubore thinks to himself that he must be even more handsome than he was then. And against all odds, the mere idea of that makes his heart threaten to thud right out of his ribcage.

His hand moves deftly as it always does, confident as it always is. He draws like a man possessed, teeth digging lightly into his lip, and doesn’t stop until he gets to where the eyes should be.

Then Unubore’s stock-still, staring at an eyeless face, watching his drawing as if it’d finish on its own. His hand hovers over it, his pencil poised to scribble, but no matter what he does–or how hard he tries to imagine the way the barista looked at him–he finds himself stuck, stupid, and unable to carry on. Disheartened, Unubore puts his pencil down, looking over the paper one last time, and then bites hard enough into his lip for it to hurt.

The boy looked at him with an intensity Unubore could never replicate.

He hunches over with his head in his hands, frustrated beyond all reason.

* * *

His friends at the bar are falling in love left and right. Every time Unubore visits, there’s a new girl to talk about, and every time they speak to him, he smiles and says he supports them with all his heart.

That isn’t a lie, at the very least. That his best friends are falling in love makes him happy, and that they’re so hopeful for that love to succeed is a quality that Unubore himself has more often than not. But these days, as they find romance and seek romance, as sometimes they succeed and more often they fail, Unubore feels himself shrivelling more and more.

He’s tried to do otherwise, of course. There’s no sense in being hung up over a boy you met over ten years ago when there’re so many other opportunities out there. But that single taste of Daterra Sweet triggered too many memories in Unubore for him to let it go, and in no time at all his first love became his present love.

Sometimes Unubore wonders: given his romantic history, maybe that boy is a criminal now? He was so quiet then, so full of secrets, and as a detective Unubore wouldn’t discount him of it. But whatever professional ideas he might have are vetoed by the parts of him that’re human; the way the boys eyes looked then and the way his coffee tasted–Unubore doubts he could hurt anyone.

He sighs, flipping his phone open and closed absentmindedly. The rest of Unubore Five are laughing together, showing pictures of beautiful girls to each other, telling their stories, sending erotic text messages–and here Unubore is off to the side, nursing a glass of whiskey and wishing he knew where that boy went.

“Goro-chan,” he says, holding his empty glass out with a half-smile, “can I have another?”

The bartender fixes him with a look both scolding and worried. “This is gonna be your fourth glass, Mr. Detective. You sure you want that much?”

Unubore smiles even wider. “Love hurts, Goro-chan.”

So Goro pours more whiskey in and Unubore downs it all. Half of him wonders if this might trigger his memory of the boy from long ago, but the other half of him is aware that drunkenness doesn’t cause miracles. All it does is dull the sense of loss in his chest, even if it’s only in the slightest sense.

* * *

Work is nearly impossible the next day with the strength of Unubore’s hangover. While he’s got some saving grace, like the fact that he doesn’t puke at any time, the remnants of the whiskey in his system makes it feel like his brain’s rusted over.

Saeki scolds him for it, calling him unprofessional. Unubore takes it in silence because his head hurts too much to argue, and in this case, his partner’s yelling already makes the whole thing bad enough.

Off the clock, though, when they’re both back in the precinct and having their lunch breaks, Saeki is a little nicer to him. He gives him half his bento, which Unubore accepts now that Rie’s the least of his problems, and they eat and talk about the case–or at least, Unubore does the former and Saeki does the latter.

It’s pretty open-and-shut, as far as Unubore can tell, so there’s no rush to do anything. The more food he gets into his mouth, the less his skull throbs and the easier it is to think. This time when Saeki asks him for his opinions, Unubore provides more insight than a nod or shake of his head, and they wrap all the details nice and neat enough for them to be sure in who they’ll be arresting later in the afternoon.

Saeki is a good partner, all his eccentricities aside. Besides, it’s not as if Unubore isn’t without eccentricities of his own, and Saeki accepts all of them in spades. The man cares about his well-being in a strange, aloof little way, but it’s compassion all the same, and Unubore really feels it when his partner insists he finish all the rice in his bento.

“I even ordered us coffee,” he says, proud of himself as he crosses his arms over his chest. Unubore smiles graciously, which is as much as he can manage with his mouth stuffed with as much food as it is. “My wife and I used to visit that cafe all the time when we were still dating, but they do deliveries now, so I can drink the Tenchou’s coffee as much as I like.”

“Is it really that good?” Unubore asks after he swallows.

Saeki harrumphs, putting his nose high in the air. “You’ll find out when you taste it.”

When they have about ten minutes of their lunch break left, a chipper young man enters the precinct with a bright grin. “Delivery from Manhattan!” he says, voice loud enough to carry through the entire room, and Saeki’s quick to urge him over to use his desk for the coffee pot.

Unubore watches, curious, as cups are filled. Saeki obviously takes the first one, but the second one he hands to Unubore, saying, “Taste this and tell me it isn’t the greatest.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Unubore says with a scoff, bringing the rim up to his lips and taking a gulp.

The sun shines through the window. The air-conditioner is noisy because it needs to be fixed. People are drinking coffee, papers are being printed, and Saeki makes a choking noise before smacking Unubore’s shoulder, asking if he’s okay.

Unubore’s paper cup is crumpled in his hand. He has coffee on his upper lip.

He buries his face in his other hand and sobs harder than he’s ever sobbed in his life.

* * *

Manhattan is a cafe located near the Chuo Television Station, which Unubore learns after taking the young man who delivered their coffee hostage. Saeki yelled at him when he ran away from the precinct, saying they still had a suspect to cuff, but Unubore ignored all of it as he threw Shinobu (or so his nametag says) into the passenger seat.

“I, uh, I brought a bike,” Shinobu tried to tell him, but by that point Unubore’d already floored it and started driving.

He goes past the speed limit, cheating with the police siren going on his car. Unubore has some distant awareness of Shinobu screaming to his side, but his mind is focused on one thought alone: the boy he met is out there, and he’s still making coffee, and no matter how reminiscent of death his heart might’ve been as of late, it’s suddenly found reason to beat again.

When he gets there, he sees that Manhattan is a quaint, tiny little shop, reminiscent of the plain booth in the far corner of an event centre. The sign is written in katakana, plants grow outside, and there’re multiple sheets of paper taped up with new additions to the menu written down. The curtains look classy, the building itself is an elegant, wood-like colour, and as the front door swings open, an elderly couple leave with smiles on their faces.

Shinobu looks considerably frazzled when he gets out of the car, Unubore hot on his trail as he opens the driver’s side and goes after him. He barely registers slamming his door closed or the click of the locks, and even though Shinobu opens the door for him and says ‘after you’, Unubore’s so out of it he doesn’t even say 'thank you’.

He walks in, the smell in the air so familiar he feels he might cry again. It’s that same scent he remembers, sweet and thick, and the place is so quiet and lovely Unubore’s not sure what to do.

He panics, suddenly. Shinobu’s already walked past him, but Unubore’s throat is closing up and his heart is starting to ache in his chest. He slams his fist against it, clutching hard and trying to catch his breath, and despite how close he is–how by some furious, amazing twist of fate, true love really did pull through–fear starts to swallow him up like the ocean.

“Um, Mr. Detective?” Shinobu’s back, awkwardly trying to catch Unubore’s gaze. “Do you want to sit down, or…”

What if the boy–no, he’ll be a man now because of how long it’s been–doesn’t remember him? What’s the chance that he’ll remember him, anyway? What if despite it all: the heartache and the distance, he came this far only to be rejected?

Unubore’s vision blurs. His ribcage constricts and tightens, the darkness eating him up alive.

But what if he isn’t rejected at all?

Love is a whirlwind. Love is a rollercoaster. If he’s rejected now, then it only means the door to another new love will open–and at least Unubore will be able to tell himself that he tried.

Shinobu’s hand rests on his shoulder. “I can get you a glass of water?” he says, but Unubore shakes his head.

“No.” And he stands tall, ignoring the throb of his heart, the strong pump of his blood, and the heat building in his neck. He’s gotten out of pits of despair. He’s gotten over lost loves. He’s come back strong every time he’s been knocked down, and so Unubore clenches his hands into fists and holds his head up high. “Thank you, Shinobu-kun. But I’m going to be okay.”

Shinobu doesn’t look like he believes him, but Unubore steps forward all the same, walking further into the essentially empty shop. All the details fade away–the decorations, the furniture, the appliances to the side. All that remains is the scent of coffee, the remnants of what was in his mouth earlier, and now–

Unubore turns and sees the man behind the counter, the man who watches him with the eyes that had eluded Unubore so.

He swallows, finding his courage, and comes forward to press his hands to the bar. He’s not sure if the man remembers him, and he sees no hint of recognition in his gaze, but he’s as beautiful as Unubore remembers, even with the new moustache on his lip.

Unubore smiles. The man startles with uncertainty.

But Unubore takes his hands all the same, gripping them firmly in his own.

“Master,” he says, and he feels the way the man’s fingers flinch beneath his hold, “I love you.”


End file.
